Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

what would tom watson look like with a scarf on?

MP using winky face emoticon feels wrong for some reason

"it's for a duckhouse ;-)"

Hmm. I hate to say it, but respect to both Rusbridger and Do ... er, Tom Watson for the way each of them handled that.

Re: TG, I'm deeply suspicious of these awful straw-man dinner parties that only seem to exist in broadsheet columns and sub-Mike Leigh comedy-dramas. Even if they are as bad as she suggests, perhaps she should turn down such invitations or find new friends rather than indulging in phony epater-le-bourgeoisie posturing.

then what would she write about?

Why does no one invite me to their dinner parties? by Tanya Gold.

Picnics; a pathetic exercise in al fresco exhibitionism by Tanya Gold.

Why do I imagine anyone gives a shit what I think about anything? by *fill in g2 hack of your choice*

Predictable:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/jun/15/defence-wedding-gift-lists

And the humiliation of taking a dozen nasty cut-glass whisky tumblers to Selfridges to exchange them only to be told: "I'm sorry, madam, but this design was discontinued eight years ago," cannot be underestimated.

Can't imagine anything worse, tbh.

Why have all these Femail journalists suddenly started turning up in The Guardian? Have rates been cut in Kensington or raised in Farringdon?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/15/charlotte-jones-complaint-comic-jon-henley

lol at even 8-year-olds zinging the guardian but really, this is sub-student paper shit.

Wedding Lists? "Boring".

Small child on the money.

I dunno. Maybe getting 8yos to edit papers is the way forward.

There was some godawful fucking jism in the Nobserver at the weekend that I nearly posted on here for shits and giggles, but really: it was so fucking dreadful I couldn't be arsed. What the fuck was it again?

Oh aye, it was this. Over-inflated sense of own importance much, Polly? (And I say that as a non-parent.)

And not only that she wrote the same thing in February.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/08/motherhood-children-babies1

She really is quite poor.

Ooops, I didn't read past the first few sentences - I see she says that herself. Way to earn yer fee then Polly.

Must have had another pregnancy scare.

Jeezus "I Hate Babies" is one of the all time challops classics for scumbags and morons.

Yeh, but it takes a special kind of cock-drip to twist it into "I hate babies: pity me, for I am socially superior".

I have a feeling that if PV's friends give her grief all the time, it's not just because she doesn't have children.

Maybe going round your friends' houses and shrieking and jumping on a chair like the woman in Tom and Jerry every time a kid gets near you doesn't endear either.

guardian assholes removing themselves from the gene pool should be celebrated surely?

Yeh, but you just know she's going to hit 40 and then decide she's got a god-given fucking right to fertility treatment on the NHS.

In a series of blowing minds pieces for the Graun.

Either that or a hard-hitting year-long series about how adopting a Burmese baby requires lots of paperwork.

But you can easily fit 3 of them in a suitcase.

I don't know the woman at all (and I really, really hate the Cocktail Girl persona her editor, a woman, encourages PV in) but I'm guessing that it's easy to sit in judgement of women's reproductive choices when you're a man, as everyone here criticizing her seems to be. This is one of those times when I feel like bitch-slapping you guys with a rag-eared copy of From Reverence To Rape or similar.

There's a lot about internecine struggles between women that men either just don't get, or allow to slide because they win if women are fighting each other, especially if they're doing it on the sly (none of my friends who are mums do this). When women who have children do a passive-aggressive number on other women who don't have them or cite MY CHILD in power struggles with female colleagues (it's happened to me; similarly when interrogated about not having kids I feel like my privacy is being invaded) it's hard to have any righteous comeback without coming off as a total churl.

Suzy I'm completely down with choice I just hate people who make a fetish of child-hating. Also the internecine politics bit is kind of lost to the outside world when you air it in the cobblers lifestyle section of a broadsheet, just like fighting with yr friend over their wedding list.

suzy absolutely otm.

Suzy IS Polly.

No-one on here (as far as I can see - I haven't read the whole thread) is slagging off her choice to have or not have children but rather the fact that that article is a pile of crap (warmed over crap at that).

I'm surprised that people care whether or not you have kids. Lots of my friends have simply said they don't think they want any and I can understand that - no idea why it should be a big deal or even 'the norm' to want/have kids. Is this really the general consensus or a PV strawman?

(I'm quite interested in all this as how people choose whether or not to reproduce is a bit of a fascinating thing for me)

Typical Kate response: I agreed with every word she said. Maybe not the tone in which she said it, because that cocktail girl personna wears thin on me, too.

I get this feeling quite often on this thread, when I'm reading the vipituousness with which ILX0rs attack the Guardian writers, that I agree with said writers far more than I agree with the other ILX0rs. And I don't know if that's my gender, or my class, or simply that I'm the kind of nasty person that you would all hate if I had a newspaper column rather than a blog.

But I'm with Suzy on this one. You have NO IDEA of the kind of societal pressures that women face on this issue, so your criticism of the harshness with which a particular woman may strike against it seems... ungrounded.

i.e. if you got the kind of continual public invasive criticism of your reproductive status that women are subjected to, you might snap back with the kind of fierceness expressed in that article.

kate also otm

Sure, the article was a little over-the-top with "me me me", but turning "personally I don't want kids" straight into "child-hating fetish" (with all sorts of assumptions about what a terrible self-important hypocrite would say such a thing and how such a monster will have to change her mind in ten years' time) kind of doesn't fit with claiming that it's no big deal and what's all the fuss about.

(spacecadet is not even 30 yet and still undecided regarding children and already feeling kind of got at with various bombardments of how totally selfish and disorganised and medically reckless it is that I haven't managed to sort out my life sufficiently to want or be in a position for the breedings)

You have NO IDEA of the kind of societal pressures that women face on this issue

Mmm, absolutely. I never talk to my partner of 10 years about any of this, or indeed to any other women at all, childless or otherwise; it's never once come up in conversation with anyone else ever (perhaps because my penis is blocking my ears, or something); and indeed, I should refrain from discussing reproductive or other sexual issues -- let alone terrible journalism -- because that aforementioned penis keeps getting in the way. Come on, give the male posters on this bit of this thread some credit for not being total wankers, eh?

Ned sums it up: it's the tone of the thing that sticks in my craw, rather than the fundamental point she might be trying to make. "I was certainly a bit sensational, a bit flippant," she says of her previous article ... oh, right. Always a good way to deal with an issue in print, that. "No one ever asks a parent why they have kids" ... do you do any research, Polly? Less than two months ago, hacks were all over this and it would have been an interesting springboard to use for something that might have been worth reading.

Kate, you say it's a "fierce" piece: I don't see that at all. I see unnecessarily snippy, but not fierce.

When women who have children do a passive-aggressive number on other women who don't have them or cite MY CHILD in power struggles with female colleagues (it's happened to me; similarly when interrogated about not having kids I feel like my privacy is being invaded) it's hard to have any righteous comeback without coming off as a total churl

This is a more interesting and salient point as it pertains to the workplace: I've bitten my tongue at work a few times in situations like this precisely -- oh, the irony! -- because I think, well, as a (childless) bloke I don't want to risk causing offence by saying something like: "Look, millions upon millions of other people are getting on just fine raising their children without making a big deal of it every five seconds, so what makes you so special?" Once again, though, this is about particular individuals: just as my criticism of that PV article is nothing to do with "women who choose not to have children" -- I'm living with one, remember -- but about "self-centred journalists who confuse themselves and their poorly expressed opinions with wider issues". Oh, hang on, that's so much contemporary opinion-journalism in a nutshell, isn't it?

This might be key, though:

I agreed with every word she said. Maybe not the tone in which she said it

I just can't see past the tone. It reeks of smugness and entitlement.

I'm thinking PV must be jealous of all the attention (and a regular column) Zoe Williams got out of being preggers.

(I'm joking sisters)

and how such a monster will have to change her mind in ten years' time

Way to twist things, dude. Who said "will have to"? My -- admittedly sneering and nasty -- comment was more about the vacuous self-centredness this writer displays, rather than about societal notions wrt children. Fuck's sake, the western world would be a billion times better if people thought -- long, hard and fucking carefully -- before they bred. I've said that here passim. With PV -- and indeed so many other columnists on so many other papers -- though, thinking always seems to come second to "ooh, can I turn this into a drivelly piece of writing?"

PV shouldn't worry about missing out on DVD box sets, it must be said. I'm a new dad and have gotten through the first two seasons of Homicide, both season of Breaking Bad, the entire 24-episode run of Nowhere Man, and watched an untold number of movies.

I can certainly sympathize with feeling baby pressure, I'm sure it's not fun. Her column doesn't examine her own feelings at all though, which seems weird. Surely there's some level at which she feels conflicted? Surely that's the interesting, difficult bit? I guess she'd tell me it was patronizing to even suggest that but Christ, if she was that impossibly self-assured, why write a moany column about it?

Because deadline was approaching and some poor hapless sub was sitting there with a fucking great hole to fill? Why else does "journalism" like this exist at all?

carry on with the taliban tea break, chaps.

(no real "defences" being offered here beyond the standard "some of my best friends are..." trope of the prejudiced)

grimly, yes. It's just strange to me that for a column that's all about her, to not really examine herself at all.

xp Because ad hominem attacks are much better right Dingbod?

I just can't see past the tone. It reeks of smugness and entitlement.

Which is exactly the columnist's point, isn't it?

That so many parents see having a child as their free pass to smugness and entitlement. To me, the tone is a way of throwing back this attitude straight back in their faces.

Not saying that *all* parents believe this ^^^^^^^ but clearly enough for it to provoke a reaction and be commented on.

(xposts) Sorry grimly, went a bit overboard with the paraphrasing. But apart from the admittedly irritating and vacuous "me! like Cameron Diaz!" tone, it seemed a fairly innocuous point of view which was promptly greeted by "BABY-HATER" remarks, and "I bet that a woman who expresses this belief will do something wasteful to the contrary of it in a decade" seemed a bit of an assumption, to me.

(Though I suppose it was really "I bet that a woman who has an opinion as un-examined as this one seems to be on a time-sensitive subject" etc etc, which, well, OK, it does a bit, but I am heading for that point while not daring to think about it myself)

Still, I haven't read her original piece and it sounds like I'd probably be a lot less inclined to stick up for her if I had. Also I am cranky this morning, but you could tell that already.

xpost

Marcello, you're being unusually gnomic and irritating here. Are you seriously saying that we're all woman-haters because, umm, we happen to think that one particular hack is talking pish? Because that would be beneath you. Bottom line: if Polly Vernon was able to articulate herself even half as clearly as Kate or Suzy has here, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.

We really need an ILX meme for the kind of article people read solely so they can rant about it on this thread.

That so many parents see having a child as their free pass to smugness and entitlement. To me, the tone is a way of throwing back this attitude straight back in their faces

OK, I see what you're saying. I guess I'm just an equal-opportunities curmudgeon who sees smug parents and smug non-parents as equally loathsome (and I'm pretty sure I've been the latter myself; I'd like to think I've grown up a little).